Table sort by using textExtraction using data-sort-value attribute in td - jquery-plugins

Question

Added the following td. The date value is coming as a format 01 Aug 1990. I want to sort that column. But it is not working. How can I properly set the data-sort-value so that it sort in correct way
<td data-sort-value="${info.offDate}" class="${someclass}">${info.offDate}</td>
I have the following javascript for sorting -
$(function() {
$("#infoListTable").tablesorter({
textExtraction: function(node) {
var attr = $(node).attr('data-sort-value');
if (typeof attr !== 'undefined' && attr !== false) {
return attr;
}
return $(node).text();
},headers: {
dateFormat: 'dd-mm-yyyy',
6: { sorter:'otherDate' }
}
});
});

Answer 1

The built-in parser for 'dd-mm-yyyy' doesn't understand month names. It is expecting all numerical values.
You can add your own parser. Since modern browsers are able to parse new Date("dd MMM yyyy"), the parser is very simple (demo):
$.tablesorter.addParser({
id: 'date-dd-MM-yyyy',
is: function() {
return false;
},
format: function(str) {
var date = str ? new Date(str) : str;
return date instanceof Date && isFinite(date) ? date.getTime() : str;
},
type: 'numeric'
});
$('table').tablesorter({
headers: {
6: { sorter: 'date-dd-MM-yyyy' }
}
});
Additionally, the textExtraction method can be simplified to:
textExtraction: function(node) {
return $(node).attr('data-sort-value') || $(node).text();
}
since the jQuery .attr() function will return an empty string if undefined instead of false.